I’ll Love You Tomorrow, Provided I’m Not Busy
by Rashka the Demon
Summary: Holiday gift fic: Kakashi and Sakura, trapped suspended above a pool of man-eating sharks! Some unimpressive nudity may be included.


Christmas Exchange fic for **leafy_girl**, who requested:

a) an **almost kiss**—maybe her hands on his mask  
b) AU, **some flirtation, something sexually charged**, regular clothes  
c) kakasaku in yukata or **kimono**, some sort of **'caught' situation**.

Happy Holidays!

* * *

**I'll Love You Tomorrow, Provided I'm Not Busy**

Being a ninja put you in a lot of strange positions. Your body was property of the village. Your hands were the Hokage's hands, your feet were the Council's feet, your ears were the Academy's ears—and all of them went where they were told. When you were ordered to insinuate yourself into the life of a wealthy matriarch and gather information on a smuggling export operation, off you went and mum's the word until your ass got back.

At this moment Haruno Sakura's body, property of the village hidden in the leaves, was wrapped in a delicate kimono and pressed upright against a man's body. A man's body that was completely naked. They were being lowered together to their deaths, back to back, ever so slowly.

"This isn't how I wanted to go," Sakura said, as chain links cranked through the giant pulley above their heads and they dropped at a rate of five or six inches a crank.

The naked man she was tied to was Hatake Kakashi, and he was trying to think of other things besides the fact that he was chained naked to a woman fourteen years his junior and hanging over a trap of certain death. He focused on the feel of the silk kimono against his back, his ass, his thighs. Considering the rest of him was either bruised or pinched by chains, this was the only good thing he had available to focus on. Focusing in general was beginning to be a problem.

"Well I didn't want to die being torn apart by vicious animals. Naked."

"I guess we go out of this world as we came into it," Sakura replied, and Kakashi thought she was trying too hard to be philosophical. It was unlike her.

"You say that, but you'll go out of this world in a seven million yen piece of art."

Sakura groaned, "It's a shame, isn't it? This gown is worth half of what our client paid for this mission. If Marima gave us one for you, too, we could walk out and leave her to run her little weapons factory in peace. I hate being drugged. Um, how are you at punching sharks?"

Kakashi had almost forgotten about the sharks. He looked down at them, visible in the clear water, then looked back up at the chains holding the pair suspended. "Considering how much the depressants have dampened my chakra levels, and how doped I am right now, I'd say I've got the punching power of a six foot one, 167 pound man with a long reach, a high metabolism, and a night of late drinking."

"The night of drinking, or the morning after the night of drinking?"

"Mmmm...the night of the drinking. Yeah."

"Okay, well, I'm not as high as you are, Kakashi, but I can't control any chakra and even if I'm sober that means I've only got about two thirds of the punching force you do."

"Naaaaaaaaaahhhhh," he said, and Kakashi could tell by the way the word seemed stretch out that he really _was_ pretty fucking high. "You're probably stronger than that. You're...two thirds of me when _I'm_ sober. When I'm drunk you're probably, I bet, eighty percent."

"Thanks, Kakashi," said Sakura, sounding oddly touched.

"Sure, sure," Kakashi replied, and nodded successively several times, despite the fact that they were back to back and Sakura couldn't see his head nod even if she twisted, which she couldn't anyway because of the chains. They were very shiny chains, very new. They glinted with reflections of the water in lovely little patterns of blue and slate and silver. And every time the chain cranked the patterns changed, which was good because he got bored easily with visual stimulation.

"—punch them in the eye."

"What?"

Sakura moaned, and dropped her chin to rest against the collar of her kimono. "Try to pay attention, Kakashi. Don't look at the water, just listen to my voice. There's only four sharks down there, I counted. You've got to punch or kick them in the eye to scare them off. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"Sakura, your plan has serious flaws. We can't punch sharks if we're chained up. It's a basic fact of limited appendage mobility."

Sakura groaned, and head-butted him from behind. "For fuck's sake, Kakashi, get out of your head and just listen. I'm the more sober of the two of us, and I'm the one who has a plan."

"Alright," Kakashi said after a few seconds of very difficult thinking and another few seconds of watching the waters shift as it rose up to their feet with crank after crank. The sunlight reflected beautifully in the pool; it would be a damn shame when their blood—"You may be right about the sober thing. Somehow we're able to punch the sharks in the eye, and they go away. Great plan. Solid ending. How do we punch the sharks?"

"When they took my weapons, they forgot to take my jewelry. My ring can let out a short electric burst that, if properly administered, will counter the depressant to kick-start our chakra systems and give us at least a few temporary moments to perform jutsu or channel super-strength. Or it might send us into cardiac arrest."

"That will work on both of us?"

"Well, it'll definitely work on me. It'll probably work on you, but considering how screwed up your system is, it might just make you throw up and give you a blinding headache."

"I can handle that." No one wanted to throw up on themselves while naked, but he was above that clear, cool water and he'd probably be able to wash most of the vomit away after he hit the sharks with a big fucking jutsu. "So go ahead then. If you needed my permission to maybe give us both heart attacks, I give you full permission."

"Actually, well, I can't yet. I need hydro-oxygen exposure to activate the ring, and—"

"Wait, wait," Kakashi interrupted, wrapping his fluid consciousness around that statement before it even finished leaving her mouth. She was trying to use quasi-science euphemisms to confuse him, but being stoned didn't make Kakashi stupid. "You want to electrocute us _in the water?_"

"Yes," Sakura answered. The giant steel pulley clanked above. They were two feet from the surface now.

"How much of the drug did they give me?"

"I don't know. A whole pouch, I think."

"So when I heard you say you were going to electrocute us in the water so that we could punch sharks, it was because they force-fed me a pouch of shell dust?"

"No, _I_ keep having to repeat myself because the pouch of shell dust they force-fed _you_ is making you childish and inattentive. You follow?"

"Yes." He didn't follow, but also didn't seem to care that much. He had even stopped caring about being totally naked with his totally naked ass pressed up against the ass of his former student, and only a multi-million yen piece of cloth between them. He'd just go with what Sakura was saying, that at least would make her a little happy before they both died.

"I can't do it right away, the ring needs to touch the water. But the sharks will probably circle for a while before they try to eat us. These look like wild sharks, they don't have the tags and marks of bred species, so they probably haven't been here long enough to associate all this noise and humanity with food."

"Okay," Kakashi said, wishing Sakura would stop saying 'probably' when she justified her glorious plan. What if the tags were underneath the shark, on its belly instead of its fin? How would Sakura be able to know, then? The water distorted the images, tricking the light to alter the gray-white shapes that swiveled and twisted in silence. Their fins made attractive ripples just below the surface. "Sakura," Kakashi said.

"Yes Kakashi?"

"I think I'm getting worse. My vision isn't right." And as he spoke, their feet slipped into the green-blue pool. Under their bodies, the sharks circled with little curiosity but with many, many teeth. Kakashi imagined how those teeth would feel scraping against his femur because the flesh had already been shorn away. Or biting off his testicles. The water was fucking cold.

"It's the shell dust. It'll get even worse than this, I'm sorry."

"Is that your medical opinion?"

"Yes."

"She didn't have the decency to leave me my mask," Kakashi said, because he knew that Sakura couldn't see his face from her place at his back. At this moment the fact that his mask was gone bothered him more than the nudity, which was suspicious thinking right there. "Looks like your crazy escape plan will have to work if you want to win that bet."

"What bet?" She sounded so innocent, and the water was up to their knees now.

"Don't be coy, it's the _only_ thing you three ever agreed on."

"I won't look," promised Sakura, but he didn't believe her.

"It's okay, I guess. You'll probably be disappointed by how un-exciting I am."

"Trust me, Kakashi. Close your eyes."

Sakura grabbed his left hand in hers. Their fingers laced together, and he knew it was time. "Sakura," he began, but blue agony ravaged up his arm and into his brain, into his chest, into his heart.

The water was cold, the chains were dropping off like cotton strings, and a white and gray basket of teeth--roused to anger by a violent electric shock--swam straight at Kakashi's center. He twisted, his fist hit something soft, and the animal darted to the right. As it fled its tail swung and hit Kakashi on the side of the head, and then he didn't worry about the cold any more.

* * *

"Bucket."

It was his first thought on waking, and his first word. The rock floor of the cave was a continent of agony beneath his head. He flipped onto his stomach, heaved, and a bucket magically appeared in front of his face. Kakashi threw up into it. "What...?" he managed, before throwing up a second time.

"Well," said Sakura, who was sitting with her legs folded square. The gown their matronly target had purchased before realizing that the young artist she was patronizing was actually a spy was still wrapped around Sakura. The kunoichi was a floating vision of pink leaves and green, mossy branches. "You were drugged almost to the point of fatal overdose, stripped, tortured while naked, hung from the ceiling in chains, electrocuted, dropped into a pool of sharks, and drowned. You're probably still intoxicated, which is why your head hurts."

Kakashi wiped his mouth, trying to suppress the dry heaves because each new one hurt his chest. His body was stretched out on the stone, face down and bare up. "Oh. What about you?"

"Most of the same, except I didn't get as much of the drug as you did, and she didn't strip me, because by then she didn't have enough time to bother with the same quality of torture you received."

"I'm a lucky guy," Kakashi sighed. Sakura's eyebrows pinched to the middle of her forehead, and he realized, in an off-hand sort of way, that her hands were pulling the silk on the corners of her folded knees so tightly that the fabric was near to warping. It'd be a shame to wreck that kimono, since it might be the only thing of value they'd take from this mission. He reached out a hand which, after listing a little too far to one side, eventually landed on hers. "Hey," he said.

"You're naked!" Sakura blurted.

"Yeeeeeeeeaaaaahhhhhh."

"And you almost died!" she added.

"Yeah, but, you know. I probably won't remember most of it tomorrow. And you saved me from drowning and fought off three sharks for me." Sakura's other hand tentatively crossed over to rest on top of his, making a little sandwich. It was the only part of Kakashi's body that didn't hurt.

"Four," she corrected.

"But, I got one. I remember I got one." Sakura shrugged, and her fingers played with the tops of his knuckles.

"You only grazed him, sorry."

"Oh," said Kakashi, and felt even more wretched. He wished he had a blanket, or some pants. There were a few tools sprawled about the cave floor, but the entrance to the main complex looked mangled to the point of impassibility, and there wasn't a curtain or closet in sight. Just lots of chain and some buckets for dumping fish.

"It's not your fault," Sakura returned, patting his hand in hers with what was almost fervency. "You had just been electrocuted, and your sharingan flashed or something at the same time because I think it was reacting to the shock and my chakra in the water. And then, well, you were unconscious, which you probably should have been away with all the stuff they gave you."

"Right. Hey, you cheated."

She looked genuinely confused. "What? Are there fairness rules to escaping a deadly shark pit?"

"No, you promised not to look, and you did. You're looking right now." Her eyes skittered to the right in guilt, then came back twice as determined.

"I'll get you a new mask as soon as possible, Kakashi-sensei." She made no comment about his looks, but the sudden formality didn't escape him.

"Don't start with that. Where's Merima?"

Sakura handed him a canteen to rinse his mouth. "She packed up her operation and left a few hours ago. I don't think she even really cared if we died or not, she just didn't want us interrupting. Here, let me take that."

Mouth cleaner now, he returned the canteen. "Sakura."

"Yes?"

"Can you give me part of your kimono?"

"Actually," and Haruno Sakura looked really, sincerely apologetic, "I can't. I need it in one piece to present to Tsunade when we tell her that we totally and completely fucked up the mission. She'll sell it and defray the costs to the village."

"Right."

"Look," she said, and dug at the front of her robe. Kakashi watched the hand snake into parts unknown and let his thoughts follow. She was probably naked under the robe, or she'd have given it to him and just worn her underclothes. He really shouldn't be thinking about this. This was the same way he'd felt looking at the water reflecting on the metal earlier.

"You know I'm still high, right?" said Kakashi, and he'd meant it as a warning, or an excuse maybe, but it came out more like a weather announcement.

"Um, yeah, I know that." Sakura smiled at him. From the delicious mysteries of her clothing she pulled a scarf out, long and pale blue. "This is what I've got. I had wrapped it around my arm earlier. It's wet, and it won't cover much, but here you go." She handed it to him, and turned around half way with her eyes closed.

Kakashi pulled himself up and peeled his frozen, much-abused privates from the stony floor. For a moment the hand holding the scarf hovered near his face, and he considered using it to make a mask, because all this facial exposure had to be bad for his health, somehow. But the thought of letting the rest of him dangle freely around Sakura, and for that matter anyone else who came along, was even less appetizing. He wrapped the scarf into a makeshift loincloth, just in time to drop in place when his legs folded up without asking. He held up his hands in defense to her reaction to the noise. "I think I'll be okay to walk in about an hour. My head swam when I stood up, and I might throw up again."

Sakura scooted over to him, leaned over his legs, and placed a hand against his heart. "Is your chakra back?" he asked. He felt dizzy, so he leaned his forehead against hers.

"Some," she said, "I can help with the pain a little, but I used most of my energy to summon a slug messenger, before you woke up." She didn't take her forehead from his, which Kakashi probably would have judged mildly indecent if he were sober.

Tapping one finger gently against the skin of his chest, Sakura whispered, "This is strong, you should take care of it."

"I manage." He didn't know why he was whispering back, but Kakashi felt sure that anything could be blamed on drugs, if one took enough.

"Everyone needs a little help, sometimes," Sakura said, and he thought she sounded centuries older than her twenty two years. A century older than him, for certain.

"We're a team," he said, as if it finished the discussion. So they sat, and they waited, while the gentle waves of Sakura's energy pulsed through her fingertips and into Hatake Kakashi's heart.


End file.
